Taking a break from pictures.

I thought I might remind everyone that I do, actually, write hot and sexy fiction.  :)  A friend and I did a writing game, and this was the outcome.

Anything, Anytime

      Mike asks me, “Would you like to play a game?”

      I’ll play anything with him, anytime. “Yeah. What you got in mind?”

      “Let’s make out in my truck.”

      “Oh?” My voice rises, eager. A flush starts between my legs and I squirm a little on his sofa. We’d been civilized and restrained all during dinner, learning what the other had been up to in the last two years. Now the fun begins. “What’s the scenario?”

      “I’m dropping you off after a date, see –“

      “How old are we?”

      “High school, totally.”

      “Excellent.” My nipples tighten. We started fooling around in high school back when I still believed my body was a temple – designed for worship from afar. No, it’d been Mike who’d spent hours convincing me that worshiping from afar wasn’t nearly as exciting as up close and personal. The man had wicked, sweet hands and could make a girl moan with the way his thigh fitted between hers. “What next?”

      “I pull up, put the truck in park, turn to you.”

      I look at his mouth, remember the way his full upper lip feels wrapped around my clit. There’s grey in his moustache now, but I’m looking forward to finding out how much he’s learned. “I say thank you for a lovely night?”

      “You got it. You wanna play?”

      “Let’s do it.”

     

To be continued....

Vienna, Vienna, Vienna

On the train to Vienna. Notice the cough drops.We used a lot of them.

Every library should have an owl as its guardian.

We had the cutest dragons EVER on the fountain outside our Pension

Geneva, Switzerland

I was too sick in Geneva to go to CERN (the original plan), so instead, The Charming Man roamed the gorgeous city and brought me some images to make me happy. :)

Travel picture of the day.

Is it Paris without seeing the Eiffel Tower?

Not to be vain, but I look pretty good for a woman who had been sick all day!

Some glorious, lovely person took a picture of us.

Travel picture(s) of the day.

I'm not feeling too terribly chatty today, so instead, here are several pictures from Paris. 

Notre Dame.

 The Louvre - The room of Rubens. Hot damn!

 Holy moly! It's (#& #*& Code of Hammurabi!!

What a cherub really looks like

 I actually got to see the Nike of Samothrace! She's even more powerful and gorgeous and rippling in person.

 The Mona Lisa is really quite astonishing in person. Small and intense. My favorite shot of the entire trip - The stained glass at Notre Dame.

Outside of Notre Dame. The world needs more flying buttresses, dammit.

The statue of St. Michel, celebrating the liberation of Paris.

The Pont Neuf.

The Charming Man at the Pont Neuf.

At the Tuilleries Gardens.

Art in Person

Image copyright, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Jewish Bride is one of the most popular and mysterious Rembrandt paintings. We've all seen it, over and over, on the web, in our art history books, in our regular history books, and in prints on one's wall. I used to work at a library in an art museum. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what this painting was about.

I finally saw it in person while we were in Amsterdam, and nothing you can do will prepare you for the full impact of this image.

First - it's huge. Not as huge as, say, his famous Night Watch (which is truly huge), but the people are nearly life-sized.

Second, the color. In a flat image on a page or screen, the colors look rich and deep, but in person, they nearly vibrate in their intensity and depth. You can see how Rembrandt applied the paint so thickly in some places (the gentleman's sleeve, for example) that it literally swirls into peaks on the canvas. It is a truly three-dimensional painting.

Her jewelry looks so luscious and gleaming that you want to try it on.

I've often wondered about the man's hand on her breast. Sometimes it looked creepy and possessive, sometimes it looked greatly tender.

In person, I got a feeling of immense solace and comfort, instead. Rembrandt captured an important moment in their lives - something big had just happened to these people.

It made me think how you really can't have a full opinion on something until you've experienced it. You can have what Guy Baldwin, MS calls a 'provisional opinion', and it can even be a very well informed one. But to quote, "You can't decide how you really feel about Paris until you've been there."

I didn't how I felt about Rembrandt until I saw his work.